The Night Bullets Hit the White House — and the Secret Service Didn’t know

By Carol D. Leonnig

On Nov. 11, 2011, a man was able to park his car on a street near the White House, fire a semiautomatic rifle multiple times and inflict damage on the president’s home, and then flee the scene. This reconstruction of the events of that night shows the confusion and lapses in security — never previously reported — amid an attack that the Secret Service failed to properly identify and investigate.

“If not for a fastidious housekeeper and a lucky break, we may never have known that a shooter fired into the first family’s residence.”

Before the shots

Shortly before 9 p.m., President Obama was on the other side of the country to witness a moment in sports history: a college basketball game being played aboard the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson warship in Coronado Bay off San Diego. While the North Carolina and Michigan State teams warmed up and entertained sailors, Obama was getting ready to be interviewed by ESPN. Back in Washington, daughter Sasha was at the White House, along with Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson. Daughter Malia was expected home soon. And outside, about 700 yards to the south, Oscar Ortega was pulling his Honda Accord over to the side of a nearby street.

“At 8:50 p.m., with the president’s daughter and his mother-in-law inside the house, shots rang out on the South Lawn.”

A burst of bullets

Pointing his semiautomatic rifle out of the passenger-side window of his Honda Accord, Ortega sent bullets flying across the South Lawn. At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of the White House, smashing a window just steps from the first family’s formal living room.

Stand down’

Secret Service agents initially rushed to respond, drawing weapons and scanning for an attack. Moments later, a supervising sergeant said there had been no shots, ordering officers to “stand down.” The command surprised officers who had heard the shots, but many who had begun to respond to a possible attack returned to their posts.

No one’s here’

Ortega sped down Constitution Avenue toward the Potomac River, swerved and crashed his car near the on-ramp to the Roosevelt Bridge. Three women walking nearby heard the crash, and one called 911 on a cellphone. The Honda was spun around, facing oncoming traffic. The driver’s-side door was flung open, but Ortega had run away. “No one’s here,” a woman told a police dispatcher.

Weapon found

The U.S. Park Police and Secret Service, having determined that shots had been fired near the White House, arrived on the scene. Officers found a Romanian-made Cugir semiautomatic rifle in the abandoned car, with nine shell casings on the seat and floor.

Broken glass

With the first lady’s return that morning, the household staff was busy in the residence. A housekeeper alerted Reginald Dickson, an assistant White House usher, to come to the Truman Balcony, where she had found a broken window and a chunk of white concrete on the floor. Dickson saw a bullet hole and noticed a dent in a window sill that turned out to be a bullet lodged in the wood.

Crime scene

FBI agents, who had met the previous evening to plan for taking over the case, arrived at the White House to secure the crime scene. They interviewed some of the Secret Service officers who were at the White House during the shooting and scoured the Truman Balcony and nearby grounds for casings, bullet fragments and other evidence.

Searching for evidence

Investigators pulled a bullet from a window frame and recovered metal fragments from a center window ledge between broken exterior antique glass and interior bulletproof glass.

The investigation

Police took photographs and looked for casings, shells and bullet fragments. As they searched for evidence, the police created detailed maps of the White House with the location of each element they found.

Police recorded the different elements found during the inspection on diagrams of the White House. This sheet shows the Truman Balcony. The following slides show the evidence that was collected and how it was documented.

Aftermath of the shooting

Secret Service investigators were initially doubtful that a rifle shot from this distance could reach the White House. Also, the Secret Service lacked camera surveillance around the perimeter of the White House at the time of the shooting, which could have help investigators more quickly determine what Ortega was doing.

It took four days for the agency to realize that a gunman had fired at least seven bullets into the mansion, potentially endangering the Obamas’ daughters. The discovery came only after a housekeeper noticed broken glass.

In the wake of the shooting, an internal security review found significant lapses. Officers who thought the White House had been hit were afraid to counter superiors’ erroneous explanation of the incident. Key witnesses were not immediately interviewed. The Secret Service lacked camera and audio surveillance around the White House perimeter that would have helped the agency solve the case more quickly. Cameras were later added around the border of the complex.

Culled from Washington Post

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